Title text: A breadth-first search makes a lot of sense for dating in general, actually; it suggests dating a bunch of people casually before getting serious, rather than having a series of five-year relationships one after the other.

Explanation

When doing a blind search in computing, there are two main tactics - depth-first search, and breadth-first search. Depth-first search, as indicated in the comic, means going as far as you possibly can before looking at other possibilities. This turns out to be a bad idea: instead of preparing for his date, as he should have been doing, he instead spent the whole time doing research on snake venom, to the exclusion of even getting dressed. By contrast, a breadth-first search will look only minimally into a topic before moving on to another; any new depth exposed by this minimal check will be added to a list of stuff to do later. This would have allowed the man to briefly check many more things within the time allotted, and probably still have been able to get dressed.

LD50, or median lethal dose, is the dose of a toxin required to kill 50% of the population studied, usually expressed in milligrams of toxin per kilogram of body mass. The inland taipan's venom does, indeed, have highest median lethal dose among snake venoms. (Fortunately, it is extremely shy in temperament, and will always escape danger rather than bite if it can, which is why it isn't considered to be a particularly dangerous snake.) Incidentally, corn snakes and garter snakes are not even remotely dangerous to humans (in fact they're the most popular pet snakes), and of the four different species commonly known as "copperheads," the only dangerously venomous one is Deinagkistrodon acutus or sharp-nosed viper.

The relationship advice given in the title text should probably not be taken too seriously, even though one might be more sure about what kind of person one is looking for after already having dated a few people.

Transcript

Preparing for a date:

[A man with wet hair and a towel around his waist thinks with his hand to his chin.]

Discussion

I'm curious about the half-cut-off options in each panel. The first looks like '[something] eating contest,' the second looks like 'tracheal [something],' and the third looks like 'coral snake.' Alanbbent (talk) 23:49, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

I think you may be right about the snake, but the others I am not so sure. However, I can't help out with better suggestions... 108.162.219.58 23:53, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Inland Taipan, also known as the Fierce Snake. Dude, wikipedia might tell you this one is shy, but its still a taipan - don't be going and getting relaxed around taipans. If its in Australia and its a snake, its a fair bet you don't want touch it. Plm-qaz snr (talk) 12:43, 13 August 2014 (UTC) [Australia]

Ironically, I've never seen any xkcd character quite as dressed as Hairy in this strip... Mumiemonstret (talk) 14:09, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

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